Matzo Ball Soup — Test Batch

Instant Pot · 2 servings · 4 matzo balls · ~1 hr 30 min

Yield	2 servings, 4 matzo balls
Equipment	6-qt or 8-qt Instant Pot
Dough chill	30 min (runs while the broth cooks)
Pressure cook	25 min high + 10 min natural release
Matzo ball simmer	30 min, covered (never sealed)

The choices this recipe makes

• Flavor over clarity. The matzo balls simmer in the finished broth, not in a separate pot of salted water. They pick up chicken flavor; in exchange they shed starch, so the broth ends up slightly cloudy and a touch thickened. That's the trade, taken deliberately.
• No blanching. Parboiling the chicken first and dumping the water would remove the scum that pressure cooking traps, but it costs a step and some flavor. Skipped — a fine-mesh strain at step 4 gets it close enough.
• No browning. The chicken goes in raw. Browning adds roasted depth but turns the broth muddy tan instead of gold, and pushes the flavor toward French stock rather than Jewish chicken soup. Only the onion gets color, dry-seared, which deepens flavor without clouding anything.

Ingredients

The Broth

• Chicken — 1–1.5 lbs bone-in chicken thighs or drumsticks (2 pieces)
• Aromatics — 1/2 yellow onion, 1 smashed garlic clove
• Vegetables — 1 large carrot, 1 celery rib (half chopped chunky for the stock, half sliced into 1/4-inch coins for serving)
• Parsnip (optional, but it's what makes this taste like Jewish chicken soup rather than generic chicken broth) — 1 small, peeled and chunked
• Herbs & seasoning — 3 sprigs fresh dill (2 for the stock, 1 chopped for finishing), 1 sprig parsley, 1/2 tsp kosher salt, 1/4 tsp whole peppercorns
• Liquid — 4 cups water (covers the minimum liquid requirement for 6-qt and 8-qt Instant Pots)
• Optional — MSG; a splash of soy sauce, a pinch of dried shiitake powder, or a small piece of kombu

Small-Batch Matzo Balls

• 1/2 cup matzo meal
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 2 tbsp neutral oil or melted schmaltz
• 2 tbsp seltzer water (or cold water)
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• Pinch of black pepper

Method

1. Prep the matzo dough — minimum 30 minutes in the fridge; the chill is what lets the meal hydrate. Whisk the eggs, oil/schmaltz, seltzer, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Stir in the matzo meal just until combined — don't beat it. It will look alarmingly loose; that's correct, and it firms up in the fridge. Cover and refrigerate 30 minutes while the broth cooks. If it still won't hold a shape with wet hands, chill another 15 minutes before adding more meal — extra meal buys shapeability at the cost of density.

2. Color the onion — optional, 3–4 minutes. Set the pot to Sauté and lay the onion half cut-side down in the dry insert until the face is genuinely dark, then hit Cancel and leave it in. This is the only browning step; the chicken stays raw. Skipping it costs you a little depth and color, nothing else.

3. Pressure cook the stock — the full time is what extracts the gelatin. Add the chicken, onion (if you didn't sear it), garlic, chunky carrot/celery pieces, parsnip, 2 dill sprigs, parsley, salt, peppercorns, and 4 cups water. High Pressure for 25 minutes, then a 10-minute natural release.

4. Strain and shred. Remove the chicken to cool, then pull the meat off and discard the skin and bones. Strain the broth through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl, discard the spent aromatics, and pour the clear liquid back into the insert.

5. Shape and simmer the matzo balls — Sauté on Low; 30 minutes, covered, no peeking. Bring the broth to a bare simmer. Wet your hands and shape the dough into 4 loosely packed balls (~1.5 inches) — pack them tight and you get sinkers. Drop them in, cover, and simmer 30 minutes. Add the sliced carrot and celery coins for the last 15 minutes so they stay firm.

   • Use a glass lid, or rest the pressure lid on unlocked. Never lock and seal the pressure lid while Sauté is running — that's a sealed pot with an active heating element and no pressure regulation.
   • Watch for a rolling boil. Instant Pot Sauté cycles hotter than a stovetop's lowest flame, and a real boil knocks matzo balls apart. If it's rolling rather than lazily bubbling, toggle Sauté off for a minute at a time — residual heat in the insert carries it. Bare simmer is the target the whole 30 minutes.

6. Check the matzo balls. Cut one in half: it should be the same pale color all the way through. A darker, denser core means underdone — cover and give it another 5–10 minutes. This is the most common failure and the only thing worth cutting one open for.

7. Season and evaluate. Stir the shredded chicken back in to warm through. Then, in this order: MSG → taste → salt → taste → fresh chopped dill off the heat. Dill's aroma doesn't survive 25 minutes under pressure, so the finishing handful is what makes it smell like chicken soup.

Seasoning notes

• Salt harder than feels right. Under-salted good broth tastes worse than well-salted mediocre broth. Stop when it stops tasting flat, not when it starts tasting salty.
• MSG before salt, not after. It amplifies perceived saltiness, so seasoning salt first means overshooting. Start at 1/4 tsp for 4 cups, sweet spot around 1/2 tsp, and stop by 1 tsp — past that it flattens out and turns faintly metallic.
• Umami synergy. Glutamate plus nucleotides reads far stronger than either alone. The chicken already brings the nucleotides, so MSG punches above its weight here; shiitake powder, kombu, or 1/2 tsp soy sauce pushes it further.
• Season after the matzo balls cook, never before. They absorb broth as they simmer, so anything added early gets partly pulled into the dumplings and you lose your read on the broth.
• Fat is a choice. Pressure cooking emulsifies the chicken fat into the broth, which can read greasy rather than rich. Skim the surface, or make the broth a day ahead: chill it, lift off the solid schmaltz cap, and use that schmaltz as the 2 tbsp fat in the matzo balls.

Scaling up

Ingredients scale linearly; times don't. Keep the 25-minute pressure cook and the 30-minute matzo ball simmer regardless of batch size — both are set by the thickness of the pieces, not the volume. Only the come-to-pressure time grows.